[poppler] Moving out of the freedesktop umbrella?

[Carl-Daniel Hailfinger]

On 11.04.2017 16:53, Jason Crain wrote:
> On Sat, Apr 08, 2017 at 11:58:00PM +0200, Albert Astals Cid wrote:
>> https://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/CodeOfConduct/ has appeared from thin air 
>> from no public discussion that I can see.
>>
>> I don't disagree with having a code of conduct, but having one forced down our 
>> throats seems kind of a violation of the code of conduct itself.
>>
>> How would the community feel about moving the project somewhere else? 
>> Suggestions welcome.

I probably don't count yet as community because my attempted
contributions are minor.

That said, moving to a place where you get told about new rules before
they get enacted and where project leaders are not threatened with
"permanent repercussions" (quoted from the CoC) for failing to enforce
rules made by others might be a wise move.
Once a project leader runs afoul of the CoC by accident, they might not
even be allowed to move their project elsewhere. Who knows. Better safe
than sorry.


> I do think that this should have been publicly discussed before it was
> adopted.  According to Daniel Stone's recent email¹ on the xdg list,
> this was discussed privately by the fd.o admins, but I believe there
> should also have been a public discussion period.
>
> However, I think having a CoC is good and I don't see anything I
> disagree with in the CoC.

Quoting from the CoC:
"Project maintainers who do not follow or enforce the Code of Conduct in
good faith may face temporary or permanent repercussions as determined
by other members of the project's leadership."

This is pretty bad. Imposing an arbitrary CoC is one thing, but
threatening project maintainers with punishment for not enforcing that
CoC takes this to another level.

Quoting from the CoC:
"Project maintainers have the right and responsibility to remove, edit,
or reject comments, commits, code, wiki edits, issues, and other
contributions that are not aligned to this Code of Conduct"

This might be difficult. If you have the responsibility to remove, edit
or reject commits, this means rewriting git history for any tree
containing an ancient commit which happens to violate the CoC. Note that
it says "commits", not "unmerged commits".


> I would prefer that it be more explicit,
> especially regarding how enforcement and complaints are handled, but
> overall I agree with it and I don't think that poppler should leave fd.o
> because of this.

Enacting a law without any hint of an appeals process or even the right
of a purported offender to defend themselves and/or review the
supposedly incriminating material is really scary. Overall, the
principle of legal certainty seems to be missing in the CoC.


> ¹ https://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/xdg/2017-April/013882.html

That linked email is also pretty interesting. It even might violate one
of the principles of the CoC:
"What is set in stone is that we [...] are committed to this CoC, and
will not be turning back from it." -> violates "Gracefully accepting
constructive criticism".
If even people involved in enacting the CoC happen to violate the CoC
unintentionally, that doesn't bode well for those who didn't spend the
same amount of time thinking about it.

The CoC was enacted with good intentions, but really suboptimal execution.

Regards,
Carl-Daniel